Rigor Mortis
by sorenalice
Summary: Stiffness of death. Stiffening of the joints and muscles of a body. His accident killed him, in the long run. It took a while, but one of the first stages of death, rigor mortis, did have to set in.


**Rigor Mortis**

_I don't know if you've noticed but I love writing medical things. It gives me a chance to use my knowledge of the human body for more selfish purposes. Bit of character death and quite a bit of angst. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this because I loved writing it. Thank you to everyone who reviews, faves, reads, and follows, and thank you to GrinGrin for being my unintentional inspiration without your knowledge._

I never really thought all that much of it at first.

Things hurt less and it was hard to tell how hot or cold something was.

I wouldn't exactly call the inability to feel pain a bad thing, although I'm sure it is, it's just- in my line of work, there's a lot of pain, and the less pain I have, the better, so I ignored it.

But then it started getting worse.

I couldn't tell when I was touching something. I had to check to make sure whatever it was was in my hand.

I had to constantly look down while I walked so I wouldn't slip or trip on something. Jazz started thinking I was having some sort of self esteem issue because of it and tied me to a chair so she could psychoanalyse me and make sure I didn't need a licensed therapist or whatever.

That's when my parents found out that I couldn't feel.

They took me in to my doctor- Dr. Bartha. He said that my nerves weren't firing correctly for some reason. He prescribed me some extra vitamins and minerals to take, and saw me off.

But it got worse.

Eventually I was dropping and tripping on everything. Not because of my ghost powers, but because my hands and feet just stopped working and I couldn't move them.

When I woke up in the mornings it was really hard to move. I had to set my alarm a half hour earlier so I could get out of bed on time.

My parents brought me back in to the doctor and he said it was evolving somehow and had changed from probable peripheral neuropathy to Lou Gehrig's Disease. It's where your body is slowly paralyzed in the extremities and you can't move. So he gave me some medicine to treat that and kept me in the hospital overnight to see if I responded badly to the meds, then sent me home.

But instead of leaving and getting smaller, the Lou Gehrig's grew and expanded. I had to use crutches to get places, and even that was slow. I couldn't write or wiggle my toes. I couldn't tell when someone was touching me anywhere but my head, and I couldn't feel any pain, anywhere.

The doctor was baffled and sent me to see a neurologist.

The neurologist sent me to eight other neurologists and they all came up with the same thing:  
delayed Rigor Mortis.

Somehow, they decided, I was basically a dead body that had been walking around for a few months that was finally showing the symptoms- albeit very slowly- of Rigor Mortis.

Rigor Mortis is when dead bodies get stiff and they can't be moved at all. That's the only thing they really found when they studied me- thankfully- they didn't find anything ghostly about me, except for a low body temperature, but they kinda added that to the symptoms of Rigor Mortis because that's another reason why bodies get cold- their heart stops beating.

I've heard that sometimes to move a bodie's arms they have to break the bones. The muscles get so stiff and tight that they don't move at all.

No matter how hard anyone tried, they couldn't move my fingers or toes. And I didn't feel anything when they tried.

I was terrified.

Why did this have to happen to me?

What's going to happen to me?

Will I die?

I'm only fourteen, how can I die so soon?

My parents were treating me like glass. They didn't let anyone near me and they wouldn't let me do anything normal- like go on my computer.

Which, I am kinda grateful for. I probably would've gotten frustrated and broken it or something.

But it did get a little extreme when my mouth started to go.

They insisted that they had to spoon feed me. I resisted as much as I could when it took me nearly a minute to start shaking my head.

When I lost control of my mouth completely they switched to an IV .

I could no longer communicate. My arms and fingers were long gone, so I couldn't even write a message. They had me blinking. Twice for yes, three times for no. The doctors hooked me up to an artificial heart and breathing machine, worried that my lungs and heart would fail too.

Eventually Vlad started helping them. He had special equipment or something that they thought could help me. He even paid my whole hospital bill.

Even with Vlad's help, the Rigor Mortis was still progressing.

The doctors had me under heat lamps and electric blankets 24/7 so my muscles couldn't bunch up and die.

My other senses were going too.

First I stopped tasting the pudding they gave me. That, I guess was the smell going.

But then I stopped being able to tell if what was in my mouth was bitter or sweet or acidic or anything. That was taste lost.

Then I couldn't hear as well. People had to get right up close to me so I could hear.

Then my eyes started to blur. I couldn't even see across the room at one point. They tried glasses, but glasses are corrective _lenses_. The nerves in my eyes couldn't be fixed by lenses.

I was so scared. I mean, I was slowly losing control over everything in my body. Everyday I woke up to bad news, or a new handicap. My world was becoming smaller and smaller. I knew that I was on a bed, but I couldn't even see the end of it. I couldn't feel it, I couldn't feel the heat lamps above me.

Nothing.

The space around me was void. The only comfort I had was sometimes being able to see my family and friends sometimes- whenever they remembered that I couldn't see three feet in front of my face.

It went on like that for a while.

But eventually I lost everything. I went to sleep one night, barely able to see a centimeter in front of my face, everything ringed with darkness. When I woke up, everything was black. I couldn't see anything. I tried crying out, but I couldn't hear my own voice. I couldn't feel the vibration of my vocal cords or the rush of air past my lips. I couldn't taste my breath on my tongue or even smell anything in the room.

I was completely cut off.

I was only awake for a little bit. I think I fell asleep because when I opened my eyes again, a bright, vibrantly starry sky was above me. I could feel the wind gently playing with my hair. I felt a crick in my back forming. I smelled the warm summer air, filled with dust and sunscreen. I opened my mouth and tasted the air. For the first time in almost a year, I could feel everything that was happening to me. I pinched my arm and made sure I could feel pain. I could. I looked over to my side. My family sat waiting for me. A blanket spread out on the ground, a wicker basket set gently on top of it. Sam and Tucker were running towards us with grins on their faces.

I walked for the first time in seven months over to the blanket and sat down.

I didn't care if it was a dream.

I could feel again.

-**Vlad**-

I slowly pulled out the needle from Daniel's arm.

I was in the room when the poor boy woke up from his sleep and started breathing hard. The doctors and I had agreed that once it came to this point, when the world was completely lost to the boy, we would induce a coma so he could live out the rest of his rather numbered days in his dreams. Where he could feel and see and be with his family. It may have been a fantasy, but it was better than the reality.

The reality where he was blind, deaf, mute, paralysed, and had anosmia- no sense of taste or smell. Where he was completely cut off, helpless, and alone.

He was too young to die. He was too young for any of this. Anyone, everyone it too young for this.

He had such a life ahead of him. He was going to be an astronaut. And even if he couldn't accomplish that, he was a hero.

But now he was dead to the world. He would've been conscious, unable to communicate, unable to do anything with himself.

The last facial expression he ever had was fear. Fear that when he woke up his world would get smaller. That's why he hated sleeping so much.

Every time he went to sleep, a part of him died.

I stood up and walked out of Daniel's room to go tell the doctor that he was comatose.

The nurses came in afterward and attached brain monitors to Daniel's head so we can tell if he's still alive after we unhook the artificial heart.

His parents had given up on his recovery once he lost his hearing. They signed the 'Do Not Resuscitate' form and left, sobbing into each other's arms.

They and the Doctor made the decision together to let Daniel die without a struggle. They said that he wouldn't have wanted to 'sit around like a corpse all day'.

I'm never going to get this delayed rigor mortis. My accident- the one that made me half ghost- was fundamentally different from Daniel's. In mine, only my face was hit and a great deal of ectoplasmic energy was formed right outside my portal, mutating my cells and coating them in ectoplasm. In Daniel's however, ectoplasmic energy was formed right inside him, bonding with his cells and creating more DNA- ghost DNA. He's more dead than I am. He's been carting around his own body. The ectoplasmic energy coursing through him keeping his body from decomposition. One of the first stages of death in the body?

Rigor Mortis.

-X-

It's been a month since we put Daniel into the coma.

His parents, friends, and whole family have given up on him ever being able to be healthy and awake again.

The doctors turn off the artificial heart.

You'd think it'd be more dramatic than it was.

It was just flicking a switch. Just a small red switch with a case over it- protecting it from accidentally being bumped.

And his heart stopped.

Followed soon by his lungs.

The doctors, his family, and friends all left the room. They didn't want to watch this.

But I stayed. I didn't want him to be completely alone. I took his cold, pale hand in mine, and slowly.

So, gruelingly slow, the little squiggles on the brain monitor that represented Daniel's life died out and went flat.

He was dead.

I suppose I should get the doctors back in here so they can harvest his body for organs. But it won't take me long to do this.

I phased my hand into his, grabbed at the cold strands of substance in it, and pulled them out.

Danny Phantom was sitting in my arms, a full ghost, gone before his time.

I took out my the thermos the boy had been so fond of in life, and sucked him in. He would be out for a while. He still needed some time to form. I slipped the thermos back into the pocket it had been in.

I walked out the door of the room, turning back only to take a last look at the boy's still human body.

Black, fluffy hair sticking up at odd angles, eyes shut serenely, relaxed, immobile, dead.

A tear streaked out of my eye and I walked out of the room.

I was met with the boy's sobbing family and a team of doctors waiting patiently to enter.

"It's done." I said.

The family's weeping grew even louder and more desperate.

I looked to the surgical team and nearly chuckled. Even the boy's body was going to be a hero. His organs that were still working at the time of his death- his lungs, liver, kidneys, blood, even skin, would be used to save other people's lives.

The hero complex on that boy is unimaginable.

I paid my respects to his family and quickly left the hospital.

I drove back to my mansion as fast as I could, and released Daniel's ghost into the upstairs guest bedroom.

-**Danny**-

I blinked my eyes open. That's odd. I had stopped being able to blink that fast almost a month ago. But I could _see__**. **_

I can remember waking up and not being able to see. I can remember falling back asleep and being able to see. Was that the dream or was it when I couldn't see?

That seems like the more likely option.

People don't just recover from blindness.

I sat up and surveyed my surroundings.

Fancy looking yellow drapery hung from the posts in the bed I was laying on. A tall window with french doors opening up to a balcony to my right. Long green velvet curtains hung from the ceiling, covering the windows and only allowing slivers of sunlight to pass through. The whole room smelled like dust and ozone.

But in one corner there was a chair.

In that chair was a man.

Vlad.

He was out cold. His mouth hung open and a string of drool was slowly making its way down his chin. Every once in a while he snored or snorted. It was an overall attractive picture.

I turned away and walked towards the balcony.

"Daniel?"

I looked back at Vlad, wiping his face off and blinking the sleep out of his eyes. The man stood up and walked over to where I was.

"What are you doing?"

"I just woke up. What am I doing here?"

"Ah. Yes, well, I'll explain soon. What's the last thing you remember?"

"Waking up blind and then going to sleep." Vlad nodded.

"Do you want to know what happened?"  
"Yeah." Vlad opened his mouth, pondering his next few words carefully.

"You see, Daniel, your nerves and muscles completely shut down. The only things working when you were awake were your brain, lungs, and digestive system. Your heart was being run by a machine known as the artificial heart. It pumps oxygenated blood into your body, and deoxygenated blood out. When you woke up blind, we had already decided our course of action if you hadn't gotten better in one month. We put you into an induced coma, so you could dream about having your senses at least and make your last month or so enjoyable for you. Your parents signed the Do Not Resuscitate form and said that if you were not well enough in a month, they would turn off the artificial heart. Almost too soon, a month passed and they turned off the heart. Your lungs shut down, followed by your brain. When you were finally gone I sucked you into the thermos and brought you back here."

"What do you mean 'gone'?"

"You died, Daniel. I watched your human body die."

I looked down, finally noticing myself.

Black and white jumpsuit, glowing skin, gloved hands, no beating heart, no breath in my chest.

Dead.

I was only fourteen. Why did I have to die? What did I do to deserve any of this?

I was just trying to help my parents when I turned on the portal. I was just trying to help people when I hunted ghosts as Phantom. All I've wanted was to be a normal kid.

A kid who didn't have to worry about being blown up in his own home.

A kid who didn't have to worry about being hunted by his parents, his government, even other ghosts.

A kid who could walk down the hallways without being called weird because of his parents.

All I've done is help people. All I've gotten in return is pain and suffering.

But someone needs to do it.

If I don't suffer, who will?

Besides, without my human half to worry about, I can go full time. I can still see Sam, Tucker and Jazz. I won't be able to see my parents or Valerie without being hunted. But few is better than none. I would still miss them, of course, you can't just forget who your parents were without _a lot _of trauma.

I look up at Vlad. He's gauging my reaction, staring at me with a curious look on his face.

"Vlad, can I stay with you? I mean, I can't really stay at home anymore and-"

"-Of course you can, Dear boy! You can stay here as long as you like. You'll always have a place here. You might be pleased to know that the whole grounds of this mansion has an ecto signature suppressor. Ghost detectors and trackers can't follow you inside. You'll be safe here. We're still in Amity Park, too."

"Really?"

"Yes. You've done so much. It's only fair you get that much in return. I'm already working on clearing your reputation with the town. Soon, hopefully, you won't be hunted at all."

I wrapped my chilled, glowing arms around Vlad's warm shoulders and squeezed.

**I may not be even a little human anymore, but hugs are still useful.**


End file.
